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For a bunch of the big cable and satellite companies, it does indeed look like a very merry Christmas and a happy new year are on the horizon — but consumers can be forgiven for feeling a lot more grinchy about it. That’s because all the new nickels, dimes, and dollars that are going to line businesses’ big virtual pockets are coming directly from subscribers in the form of unasked-for price hikes. [More]

Hey everyone, the price of coffee beans is going down! That’s great news — for Starbucks, but not necessarily for its customers. In fact I would be remiss in not mentioning the news that prices are actually going to go up pretty much everywhere across the country at Starbucks next week, by about 1%. [More]

Thanks to innovations like 3D and IMAX (or IMAX-ish), going to see a movie in theaters is an experience that a home theater really can’t match, even if a home theater has the benefit of comfier seats and no obnoxious strangers. The bosses of Regal Cinemas, one of the chains that have consolidated Americans’ away-from-home movie experience, understand this. So they’re going to raise ticket prices some more. [More]

The rough economy of the last few years has spoiled shoppers with low inflation, but there’s no guarantee that prices will continue to stagnate next year. As the calendar turns and we march into 2012, some items and services to which you’re accustomed to paying the same price could be more expensive. [More]

The era of $1-per-night movie rentals was too sweet to last into November. Perhaps seeing some opportunity to up profits in the wake of Netflix’s bumbling, Redbox announced its nightly DVD rental rate will rise to $1.20 on Monday. For now, Blu-rays will stick at $1.50 and video games will remain $2 per night. [More]

Netflix continued its recent tightening and price-raising by making it so there can only be one streaming video feed per account. UPDATE: Netflix has clarified and said that all accounts can support at least two concurrent streams. The users who saw/heard that they could only have one stream were experiencing a glitch which Netflix is fixing. [More]

99 Cents Only, the L.A.-based chain of not-quite-a-dollar stores, has come up with a novel approach to the growing losses it faces as the economy worsens: they’re raising their top-priced items to 99.99 cents.

Well, we’ve been saying it would be more honest to just raise prices instead of shrinking the product, and Hershey has taken us up on that. On Friday, only months after a 13% hike back in February, Hershey announced a price increase of 10-11% across the product line, citing higher costs for ingredients.

The notorious Grocery Shrink Ray was supposed to help prevent this, or so we were told by apologists for it, but Datamonitor is reporting that Kraft Foods, Kellogg’s, ConAgra, Sara Lee, and Tyson “are all expected to announce a hike in the prices of their products” in the near future. Here are some of the hikes you can expect, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

An alert reader noticed that something looked fishy on the Sam’s Club order screen when he was ordering new checks—if you decide to order double the number of checks, your price-per-box magically goes up the tiniest bit. We figure the amount is so small that most people don’t even notice it, or they notice it but figure they’ll still save time and shipping so it’s worth the 3-5 cents extra. Still, it’s a sneaky thing for a bulk discount store to do.

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